If history is to be made Thursday at the NBA draft, it won’t be on account of the various players who’ll be selected in the lottery. With one or two exceptions, the class of 2011 is about as thrilling as an economics textbook.

The most compelling question about this draft is not which players will end up where. It’s whether this will be the last “one-and-done” draft—whether the next collective bargaining agreement the league signs with its players association will contain a draft age limit that extends to 20 years, remains constant at 19 or reverts to the 18-year standard that marked the old preps-to-pros era.

The draft age limit—cleverly but derisively nicknamed the “one-and-done” rule—has been condemned about as passionately as Prohibition. But the rule’s critics are mostly drunk on their own points-of-view.

The facts clearly indicate the draft age limit has been a positive for basketball at all levels, whether it’s the significantly improved television ratings both the NCAA Tournament and NBA playoffs enjoyed this spring or the huge popularity evident for such one-and-done products as Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls.

In 2007, Bob Knight, then head coach at Texas Tech, was quoted as declaring about the one-and-done rule, “It’s the worst thing that’s happened to college basketball since I’ve been coaching.” He continues to crusade on this issue, occasionally misstating facts when it suits his case.

That may be on account of the truth being so overwhelmingly against him. Knight’s position has been based on the possibility a player could enter college, pass a minimum number of classes in the fall semester then skip out on most academic work in the spring term while completing his college season and aiming toward the draft.

The problem with this stance is it ignores the fact there was nothing stopping a freshman player from doing the exact same thing before the age limit was in place. Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Luol Deng and Marvin Williams went pro after one season each in college, and that was before the 19-year age limit was in place. Whether they went to class depended on how much it mattered to them, and how scrupulously their programs policed the issue.

In February, ESPN analyst Dick Vitale wrote in his USA Today column, “The real beneficiary of the one-and-done rule is the NBA. Hey, baby, you don’t have to go to Harvard to figure that out!”

He explained the rule helped create ready-made stars of Rose, Durant, Wall and Kevin Love for the league, which certainly is true. But he ignored that the process of “creating” them provided enormous benefits for Memphis, Texas, Kentucky and UCLA.

Vitale later mentioned basketball is a “game of familiarity and rhythm,” which certainly may be true, but college basketball always has demanded that teams reinvent their formulas from year to year. Players graduate and transfer, and they’ve been going pro with eligibility remaining for four decades now.

There seems to be a belief the one-and-done player almost immediately destroys what he builds because it’s so difficult to plan for his departure. Anecdotally, that may be true in some instances—UCLA’s Jrue Holiday being one example.

However, as a group teams have been minimally impacted by attracting one-and-done players and by losing them. Since the first season impacted by the rule, 2006-07, those teams that were host to one-and-done players saw their average wins increase by one per season (from 24.29 to 25.29). The year after losing those players, their win totals dropped by about two (to 22.92).

Ohio State has won the past two Big Ten championships since losing five one-and-done players in three years. Washington has won two Pac-10 Tournaments since losing center Spencer Hawes. North Carolina reached the 2008 Final Four and won the 2009 NCAA title after Brandan Wright went one-and-done in 2007. Kentucky lost four one-and-dones in a single draft and went from 2010 regional final loser to the 2011 Final Four.

Of 20 programs that have had one-and-done players, only six can be demonstrated to have declined substantially since—and Indiana’s implosion was not even tangentially related to Eric Gordon’s one year with the Hoosiers.

The overwhelmingly negative public perception of one-and-done is mostly rooted in emotion, perhaps even hysteria.

Commissioner David Stern has talked rather emphatically during the past year about his desire to bump up the age limit to 20, which would mean prospects having to wait until they’re two years out of high school to file for early entry. The NBAPA has reverted to the default position that it prefers the current standard of 19 years be removed. It’s difficult to say what the resolution will be, because each side has only a residual economic stake in the outcome. It’s not an issue where the dollars on either side can be counted.

It has been good for the game, though, at all levels. That much is clear.